The USS Bataan (LHD 5) deployment is coming a day late, and it is particularly noteworthy the Navy will have difficulty deploying more ships from the east coast if necessary. Hurricane Hanna will soon be influencing the lines of communication at sea off the east coast of Florida, meaning after Monday any other ships will be forced to take the long route through heavy seas around Hanna to help in the Gulf Coast.

So here’s my challenge to the Obama campaign: these towns represent pretty much every TV market in the state, and I bet an equally ridiculous sounding lists of cities bigger than Wasilla could be produced in almost every other state that they’re targeting. Get a group of friendly Mayors to do a press conference in every one of those markets the day of Palin’s nomination speech and talk about how they’re evidently qualified to hold the second highest office in the land two years from now.

The only trouble with this plan is that I’m willing to bet that at least a couple of these mayors do think they’re qualified to be vice president.

He’s running for the Presidency at a time when the Republican brand is in the toilet, with a party that seems unable to excite its hard-core supporters or woo swing voters, and a leadership — McCain included — that gets the heebie-jeebies when called upon to discuss any topic save terrorism, 9/11 and the Surge. Even if by some Jeremiah Wright-aided miracle he edges out Barack Obama, he’ll limp into the White House as a John Major-in-the-making – an aging politician who won an election that belonged by rights to the other party, facing Democratic majorities in both houses, a media that will be primed to treat Senators Obama and Clinton as the default co-Presidents for the next four years, and a conservative base that’s just waiting for an opportunity to turn on him. Does this sound like a recipe for a successful Presidency?

Nothing in the Washington Post’s article about the Palin/trooper situation changes my assessment that the issue is a loser for the Dems. For what it’s worth, it seems like a straightforward account of how things got to where they are.

The Chicago Tribune supplies an update on the state of the bidding for the Cubs. A couple of the competitors are looking shaky, but Mark Cuban could face a battle with Thomas Ricketts, the son of Ameritrade founder J. Joseph Ricketts:

Forbes magazine estimates the family’s war chest at $2.6 billion. The Ricketts’ bid matches the league’s preference for deep-pocketed owners and family control, making the clan a strong candidate.

It’s not clear, though, if Ricketts made the highest offer in the first phase of the auction that was completed last month.

We are what Sozhenitsyn accused us of being. Unwilling to listen to and learn from him, we are acting out the tragicomedy of national decline. Is there still greatness in us? Just as the dying British Empire, led by the genuinely brave Winston Churchill, had one last paroxysm of greatness in World War II, we may be enacting our last spasm of courage under the leadership of George W. Bush.

What rot. This is not 1978, and Card’s take is little more than Jimmy Carter’s malaise speech updated.

When I look at the labeling now with parties, to me it all seems backwards. Republican presidents seem to be associated with huge deficits and more radical foreign policies, while Dem presidents seem to be associated with more frugality and more conservative national security policies.

I tend to make my pick largely on foreign policy, and the reason why I would take Obama over McCain is because I think Obama will be a more cautious, conservative national security leader than McCain, who I expect to be more bold and radical–much like Bush. I just don’t think America can afford four more years of that.

You might read the whole thing. He comes from a post-Boomer outlook that has little use for red/blue division or refighting the battles of 40 years ago.